After researching into the data and privacy related tracking system used by online companies, the thing that stands out the most to me is the relentless consistency in profit-seeking among most tech companies today. One can understand that making profit is important but for what price? What’s concerning is that many people online don’t know they are being tracked, as a matter of fact not even close to the real extent the online companies are actually doing.

Simple as the screenshot provide by Collin indicating the activities on the course site, every step by every student is recorded. The pizza ordering video is of course exaggerating how much companies know about you; however, it is only exaggerating the conversation and in reality the companies might have your information as much as in the video but just pretend to be innocent. The Lightbeam extension works very well in terms of tracking the websites that are tracking you. I visited a car website called the motor1 and found in Lightbeam that it tracked my information an distributed them to a various of websites.

 

Lightbeam

 

Then I went on to check the Google Privacy and Personalization setting and saw my location history. They keep a record of where I went for the past few years and I could see it clearly on the Google map. It is interesting to review where I have been to but I paused all the activity controls because I don’t want anybody to have a copy of my information, which could be used against my interest. We should tell K-12 learners to use Google services very carefully as they might gather your personal information behind your back. It’s always good to know what is happening around you when you are part of it. Gathering your personal doesn’t necessarily hurt you directly after all that’s what online companies do to make profit and we can continue to use their services. It is just that we need to know what our data are being used for and where it is distributed to and most importantly, people know the fact that their information is being collected. Oral Roberts University is introducing wearable technology to better serve the physical fitness class. Again, this is a double edge sword as they information collected could be used against student’s interest, in this case the amount of detail is massive considering you wear the wearables all the time.

After looking at the terms of use of Turnitin and its privacy and security part, I found nothing substantial because first the term page is too long and it takes so much time to scrutinize and second the terms are vague and its only telling me that the customers’ privacy are important. It is not telling us where the data will go to.

 

In conclusion while we are enjoying the convenience brought by the online technology we need to be cautious what out personal information is being collected and that we have the right to opt out from that.